


Wrong

by deathwailart



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Disturbing Themes, F/M, Gen, Paragon Commander Shepard, Renegade Commander Shepard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-11
Updated: 2012-11-11
Packaged: 2017-11-18 10:35:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/560085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her body is wrong.  Or how paragon Shepard slips into renegade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wrong

Her body is wrong. Still raw. Meant to be on ice just a little bit longer as her scars glow red. She had a scar before that cut across her face diagonally, just missing her eye and instead leaving a patch where her eyebrow wouldn't grow. That's gone. She had that one a long time, tenth street reds and petty dominance struggles, knife fights like they were from the vids they watched and no one had medi-gel. Others too. Skyllian Blitz was rough and coming out a hero meant coming out bloodied. Can't stop touching the scars. Presses down the way she would a bruise, reminding herself that they're there, that they're real. Worries at them like mouth ulcers. They flash with pain, same as ulcers, same as bruises. They'll heal, Chakwas says, she'll be just as she was.  
  
Her body is wrong. Her face is wrong. Thinks of Saren in the end, glowing. Thinks of husks and their wretched mouths, circuitry along their skin and considers peeling the skin back to make sure it's flesh and blood. Resents coming back. First human Spectre who got no help from the Council, who went and solved their problem and did her very best to do it all without being a ruthless monster and even if it was before her time, she should have been allowed to rest in peace.  
  
Should have been allowed to go quietly into that good night. But no someone had to decide that they were too selfish, too greedy to let her go. _One last thing Shepard_.  
  
People always want something of her.  
  
Stop Saren. Stop the geth. While you're on your mission stop every crisis. Maybe she should have said no more often. Said no, said do it yourself I don't have time for this. Said fuck you. But no. Paragon Shepard who rose from a background so many would call ignominious, who stepped in and went that extra mile to make sure they all came out alive, what was it Hackett said? Something about her definition of just doing her job? She had to choose between two of her friends down there on Virmire and still they weren't happy. Was there a chance to mourn Ash down there?  
  
Seeing Kaidan again she wants something, wants one person who knew every part of her as she was before, someone who can help her fit in this body that feels heavier, artificial. Someone who can touch her without revulsion. Maybe the glow will start to fade and her face won't crack clean off because that was always Kaidan, tempered, measured, solid with that rough voice and integrity enough for both. Not anymore. Kaidan is hurting, has been hurting and they lash out but Kaidan gets to go back to what he's been doing without having to figure out where he fits while she has her empty bed and missions full of monsters. Lashing out at Anderson helps, hell lashing out at any of them helps and if she likes to sit and drink in the dark with Jack as they trade stories then who is there to judge her? Everyone who knew her is dead, has changed or isn't around. Even Liara has become possessed with her hunt, Liara who helped to put Shepard in this predicament in the first place and damn if that doesn't hurt. Oh she helps Liara but viciously she hopes that the guilt gnaws at Liara.  
  
Maybe it should scare her when she lets the refinery burn, all those agonised screams that abruptly cut off into nothingness. It doesn't. Burning won't hurt like getting spaced. Better to die before the Collectors and the Reapers come for them the way they took those people on Horizon. She helps Samara hunt down a monster because that's what Shepard does, hunts monsters and blows them to pieces. She lets Garrus take his killshot - Garrus has changed, he sees the world she does all that shiny idealism stripped away and someone like Sidonis, a back-stabbing ruin of a person well he's better put out of his misery. Shame no one seems to have a bullet for her. Sometimes old parts of her come back, with Tali because something makes her want to protect Tali and maybe she doesn't want Tali to feel as alone as Shepard feels. And Thane who is dying gets a resolution with his son. She'd want the same.  
  
Pity she won't get it.  
  
The red spreads out across her skin. Spiderwebs of cybernetics. Creatures that lurk beneath her skin (is it her skin, what Jacob said about her and what she was when she came to Cerberus, scraped up from wherever they found her) and unfold within her when she is alone, crippling pain and doubts. Sometimes it happens with them, when she least expects but Commander Shepard must stand tall with a straight back even if she's a shadow of what she was, of who she was. Before she was calm, collected, compassionate. Now it's the job. Get the mission done, complete the objective. Try to sleep instead of lying awake with eyes on the ceiling or the fish tank as a foreign body is catalogued, smooth skin, no scars, no imperfections, not even a single callus. Is it really blood in her veins or is it only a replica. Geth have that milky fluid that is still a bitch to scrape off the armour. Mordin would be the very soul of discretion if she asked him to run her blood, no bugs in the research bay he assures her but she wasn't given to this level of paranoia before. Asking for confirmation that she either bleeds blood or doesn't, that's not the sort of thing a commander does unless they're one day away from blowing their brains out in the CIC. An urge lingers however to get a knife and cut down, all the way to the bone or whatever passes for bone because getting spaced leaves very little when you're not a krogan and prodding away.  
  
She gets as far as holding a knife to the unmarked flesh of her left forearm the night before the suicide mission but the metal reflects the horror of her face and she throws it across the room. Burned out discs of eyes, glowing. Menacing. Resembling more and more one of those burning husks that she shoots down with relish, dead centre bulls eye shots to the skull.  
  
Bastards. Six months grounded when she slogged through the hell of the Collector ship in the dark when she saved humanity and maybe more. All of them crawling through husks and collectors with those awful moans echoing through the place, the wet sounds that remind her of the prothean ciphers and memories still lodged in her head. They don't understand that her mind has changed and that even now she still wakes from nightmares, heart pounding, sweating, throwing herself into her personal shower, the fall of a dead civilisation. Internal organs and hate spilling out. Maybe there's a reason they seem stronger now. Waking up when she was a work in progress, almost dying again but it clings to her doggedly. Six months she spent on earth with Alliance brass around her and ready to put her on trial for working with what she had and nothing more, unable to pull their heads out their asses and pay attention. Six months of filling that by pressing down on artificial parts where the metal held her together. Sitting with psychologists and getting no bursts from anyone when the clock was tick-tick-ticking all the while as everyone decided to carry on with bureaucracy and procedure, smug in their satisfaction of doing the right thing.  
  
The only right thing is taking out a threat. Doing what you're being paid to do. There aren't many differences between soldiers and mercenaries, didn't need Zaeed on her ship to tell her that but soldiers are accountable to men and women who like to think they have morals and decency. Nothing decent about death or war but if they didn't listen to her twice before then third time lucky will have to wait until the war is in their laps.  
  
Earth gets hit and again she's thrown out, once more into the breach. More monsters, new hulking, hissing, shrieking, groaning, moaning, howling chaos. Only one who can get it done, yeah they've figured that much out by now, she can give them that. But when it gets down to the very end, when she has been beaten and broken, hauled her ass from one end of the galaxy to the other and solved all their petty fucking problems, wading through all the lies, deceits, half-truths, attempts at deals behind the back to keep the old grudges going. Not punching the salarian dalatrass is a close thing because if she unleashed the rachni again to give them a damn chance then she's not about to discard the krogan, the galaxy needs them. Because even if under her skin she's a monster, she tries not to be one all the time, tries to claw back who she was before even if that woman ended up spaced. Yeah she's brutal. Uncompromising but she'll go with what gives her an edge and an advantage. There's a reason she's the only one in the galaxy who stands a chance of getting this done and like it or not, even the damn Reapers know it.


End file.
